Well, Charlie had his hip replacement. A week ago, today. Get this: we had to be at the hospital in Bangor at 5:45 am. I know! Had to get up before 4:00, which actually was a relief because neither one of us was doing much sleeping. I says to Charlie, “I can’t believe we’re getting up this early, driving to Bangor, and not getting on a plane to somewhere nice.” He just grunted in response. We arrived at 5:30. “French early,” is what we call that. Unlike some people, we really do think the party will start without us. So we arrived at 5:30 in the morning, and you know what? Charlie walked out of …

Charlie get’s his new hip today, and it’s been a busy week getting all our ducks in a row. This kind of thing makes you think about your life together, you know, all you’ve been through. So I thought I’d revisit the story of how Charlie and me got together. It appears in my book, The Sweet Life.  Puppy Love I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know Charlie. Mahoosuc Mills is a small town, so he was always in the background somewheres, plowing with his Dad, stacking wood for Mrs. Thibodaux, riding his bike to Blue’s General Store to get licorice or playing hockey for Mahoosuc High. Best as I …

Here in the LeClair household, we’re counting down to Charlie’s hip replacement one week from today. We’ve had it scheduled since last fall. That’s when Charlie finally wrapped his head around the fact he had to deal with it because his bum hip was starting to get in the way of doing things he liked to do. He’s been limping for awhile, but I knew he had to come around to it on his own. So, I didn’t push. Once he mentioned it though, I made an appointment right away. You wait too long with this stuff and your whole body gets outta whack. Before you know it, your good hip is now bad hip, …

Sunday, we had a birthday brunch for our Dad, over to Irene and Jimbo’s. She made the “Egg Dish” (there’s only one) which is something our mom used to make involving about a dozen eggs, butter, bread, milk and cheese. How can you go wrong with that combination, right? You whip it up the night before, and the next morning it bakes up nice and light. I brought along some fruit salad and cranberry nut bread, and Jimbo fried up a whole mess of bacon. As far as we’re concerned, if there ever was a “the food of the Gods,” bacon is it. Charlie and me picked up Dad from Mahoosuc Green. They had already …

People were kind of spacey and tired last week, what with the time change. Me, too. We’re just all kind of…off. Why do we still do daylight savings time, anyway? Whether we’re springing forward or falling back, it’s a royal pain in the patootie! It’s amazing what screwing around with our sleep schedules can do. I mean, it’s just one hour. It shouldn’t make that much difference. But get this: on the Monday after we switch to DST, heart attacks go up by 24%. Strokes increase, too. Car accidents climb 17%. I’m reading that folks are more likely to get injured at work due to “attention lapses and micro-sleeps.” Charlie’s sitting at the kitchen table one …

Happy March! After a snowy beginning to the week, we segued into absolutely frigid temps driven down by the wind, then topped all this loveliness off yesterday with a wintery mix. “Wintery mix” sounds more like potpourri, doesn’t it? You know, an overwhelming combination of cinnamon, balsam, and cloves? Whether it’s smelling up the house or messing up the roads, a wintery mix stinks. But this coming week’s looking pretty good. We’re supposed to eek into the 40’s. That’s downright balmy for this neck of the woods. I’ve got visions of crocuses dancing in my head. Now that the weather will hopefully be getting warmer, we’re going to start seeing a certain spring fashion trend …

It’s snowing to beat the band here in Mahoosuc Mills today. In like a lion, right? A snow day means baking in our house, and I just finished making a batch of my Grandmother’s molasses cookies. Boy, they sure looked beautiful, if I do say so myself. Just like I remember. I have Grammy’s recipe written in her shaky hand on white (now yellow) lined paper. The thing even has Grammy’s molasses stains on it. My mother had it laminated for me years ago, and I’ve used it so much it’s starting to separate along the edges. The thing I like most about this recipe is that in the margin at the top of the page, …

Our little bundle of love, Scamp, turns eleven this week, and he still makes me smile every day. One minute, he’s acting like a grumpy old man and the next he’s playing like a puppy. When he first arrived from Poodle Rescue, Scamp seemed like such a shy, little dog. Charlie and me found it kind of odd for a fifteen month old puppy to be so quiet, so well behaved: no accidents on the carpet, no chewing on the furniture. He just watched us from his bed, getting the lay of the land. Even though we got him from Poodle Rescue, Scamp’s not pure poodle. He’s a bichon/poodle mix or “bichpoo”, which makes him …

Charlie and me were paying our bills the other day. The way we do this is, we sit down and pay ‘em together. It doesn’t take that long. We try to do it every couple of weeks. At least once a month. It helps if you put it in the calendar. I know some folks just do it automatically, right from their paycheck, but we’ve been doing it this way forever and it helps us stay on the same page. When things are tight (and they have been off and on over the years) bill paying isn’t my favorite thing to do. But the fact is, it’s gotta be done. Easier to show up and …

Valentine’s Day always arrives just in the nick of time. We’ve dried out from all the sugar we ate Halloween through New Years. Mud season is around the corner, but we still have a ways to go before the crocus are in bloom. We’re bored out of our trees, and frankly, we need a reason, any reason, to celebrate. Getting to wear red and eat candy just sweetens the deal. Remember “sending” Valentine’s cards to everyone in your class? (I wonder if they still do that.) We‘re talking elementary school, here. We had these heart shaped “mail boxes” made of red construction paper with our name printed on the front pocket. That where you put …